"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.

First, I don't have any experience with windows or linux kernel development and patching submitting.

Peer review is a norm on medium/large projects on private code development and have been this way for years. No one wants to look dumb to its "pals" (and even less to its "rivals"). Windows kernel is not, definitively, a small project so, I guess, the "pride" differential argument really does not apply on this specific scale. It may happen on small (very few developers) open source projects though as bad code visibility may be, for some, kind of embarrassing.

New challenges are a great stimulus to attract talented developers but money is also that. MS used to be famous to reward its developers. Unless things have changed a lot on recent years, I would not use this card as a differential too.

Getting back to "regular" coding, I, however, have some experience applying for "fix snippets" on small projects through independent patch proposals. Some got accept, some not.

Some maintainers are nice guys and ask you a few questions, suggest improvements and give some well-funded arguments on why things are the way they are and what could be the consequences associated to changes; some just refuse or apply the patches; some are jerks that sit on the code like all that is there is the only way to do whatever the code needs to do reasonably and shot down any attempt to alter it using crap excuses.

It happens on both worlds.

I don't want to point fingers, so just google for jerk open source maintainers if you want.